Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/476

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. MAY u, 190*.

a similar phenomenon in January, 1648> referred to the death of King Charles.

J. H. MACMICHAEL.

JACOBITE WINEGLASSES (10 th S. i. 204, 293). In connexion with this subject, perhaps I may be permitted to mention that, as a frontispiece to Ainsworth's interesting tale ' The Miser's Daughter,' George Cruikshank has given us in his own inimitable manner a graphic picture of a meeting of members of a Jacobite club in 1744-5, at the " Rose and Crown," Gardiner Street, Petty France. Standing around a table, on which there is a large bowl nearly full of water, each person held in his outstretched hand a wineglass, narrow in shape, and apparently about six inches from stem to rim. The hero of the story who, by the way, was only invited to the gathering nearly came to the end of his career in consequence of refusing to drink the health of the king over the ivater.

HENRY GERALD HOPE.

119, Elms Road, Olapham, S.W.

"OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS" (10 th S.i.246, 311). This phrase has arisen from beliefs which are far older than Christianity, and "Our Lady" merely stands in the place of Holda, Hulda, Holle, or Hulle, who, in the words of Jacob Grimm, was "the kind, benignant, merciful goddess or lady." In legend and tradition

r^F*" Holle is represented as a being of the sky, beginning the earth ; when it snows she is making her bed, and the feathers of it fly. She stirs up snow, as Donar does rain ; the Greeks ascribed the production of snow and rain to their Zeus : AIDS OMffpoe, 'II.' v . 91, xi. 493, as well as vujtdSfs Ato's, il \ Xlx - 357 ; so that Holda conies before us as a

?? i j !. of no mean rank - As othe r attributes of liolda have passed to Mary, we may here also bring into comparison the Maria ad nives, ' notre dame aux neiges, whose feast was held on Aug. o : on that day the lace-makers of Brussels pray to her that their work may keep as white as snow." Deutsche My thologie,' trans, by Stallybrass, p. 267. " T (X e 9 om P aris on of snowflakes to feathers " says Grimm "is very old; the Scythians pronounced the regions north of them in- accessible because they were filled with leathers (Herod. 4, 7, conf. 31)." Even yet, W? snow begins to fall in Yorkshire, children run out of doors to catch some of the first flakes and say :

Snow, snow faster, Hally, Hally Blaster- Plucking geese in Scotland, And sending feathers here.

It is possible that "Hally" is here identical with the German Holle, and that Blaster is

e air> mentioned fa

The " pious legend " about the building of a church on the Esquiline hill, because snow- is said to have fallen there in August, has many counterparts in legend and in story. Not only does falling snow indicate the spot, but, as Grimm shows, the site is suggested by cows in a Swedish story, and by resting animals in a beautiful Anglo-Saxon legend. And, as I have shown in my ' Household Tales and Traditional Remains, 3 it is still believed in England that fairies have pointed out the sites of churches, and moved the stones away if the builders chose the wrong site.

As everybody knows, divine origins were everywhere attributed to natural phenomena. Just as, for instance, Holda made the snow by making the feathers fly from her bed, so there was a being who scattered great stones on the Yorkshire moors. A place known as the Apronful of Stones, near Bradfield, west of Sheffield, clearly points back to a myth like that of the giantess Zechiel, who had gathered stones in her apron to build a bridge, but who fell down dead in a fright, "scattering the load of stones out of her apron higgledy - piggledy on the ground " (Grimm, ut sujjra, p. 537). Mary herself " carries stones and earth in her apron, like Athena or the fay " (ibid., p. xxxvii) ; bub " Our Lady of the Stones " would not please our modern ear, though Sancta Maria ad Lapides would sound better. On Ashop moor, in the High Peak of Derbyshire, nearly two thousand feet about the level of the sea, a heap of large boulders is called Mad- woman's Stones. There must have been a story about them, and it is evident that this strange place-name has arisen from some such belief as that which gave rise to the Apronful of Stones. How else could men, who were ignorant of natural laws, have accounted for falling snow, or for masses of rock which seemed to them to have been thrown wildly over the land ?

S. O. ADDY.

As every one knows, Montreal originally was named Ville-Marie, and, as was to be expected in a town thus specially devoted to the Virgin, several churches and religious foundations, beside the great Cathedral known par excellence as that of Notre Dame, are dedicated to her under various character- izations 6.17., Notre Dame de Grace, do Lourdes, de Bonsecours, &c.

English as the aspect of the city is in many ways, it is markedly French also, and the old French names for streets and districts remain.

One of the pleasant drives recom- mended to visitors is that around the moun-